


How (Not) To Recover Your Cringe Poetry

by Kestrealbird



Category: Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms
Genre: Carmilla being embarrassed of her cringe past, Established Relationship, F/F, Gen, How Do I Tag This, Humor, err crack maybe?, just to find some old journals, the nightmare of every historian and archeologist, they fuck up a made up library's grounds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-24 12:07:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30071982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kestrealbird/pseuds/Kestrealbird
Summary: Two weeks go by before Carmilla wakes up one Tuesday morning and loudly announces, “we have to blow up the Marigold Library.”Ibaraki’s head pokes out of the bathroom, a beauty mask halfway applied to her face. “What?” she asks.
Relationships: Carmilla | Assassin/Scáthach | Lancer, Shuten-douji | Assassin/Ibaraki-douji | Berserker
Comments: 3
Kudos: 4





	How (Not) To Recover Your Cringe Poetry

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this at 1am so I have no idea if it's coherent but it was fun regardless! Nerdy end notes as usual

It’s Carmilla who remembers where she used to keep all her old journals and diaries first, though, in retrospect, she should’ve known the tree house she’d buried them under wouldn’t be here anymore.

“Well,” Scathach says gently, “it’s still impressive to look at.”

They’re standing on the steps of the Marigold Library, the one with the two snake statues in the front of the double doors and the walls painted a horrendous shade of yellow that is probably supposed to be marigold but looks a lot more like alcoholic piss. Scathach’s head is tilted to the side as she looks up at it, Kiyohime seated on the wall beside her, Shuten and Ibaraki keeping an eye out on everyone walking past them as they fight over who gets to use Shuten’s hoodie pockets. Carmilla is too busy trying to glare a hole right through the concrete beams supporting the exterior to pay much attention to anything else going on around her.

“Are you sure this is the right place?” Kiyohime asks dubiously, staring down at the sketch in her hands, then raising a curious brow at Ibaraki.

“I said it was just a rough sketch,” Ibaraki pouts, shuffling her head into Shuten’s shoulder.

Kiyohime bites her lip to contain her grin but a smile seeps through regardless as she hands the paper over to Scathach. She looks down at the rather impressive looking tree house - for someone who claims not to be much of an artist, Ibaraki is certainly skilled with charcoal, capturing every painstaking detail that Carmilla had spent over an hour describing.

“Are you sure you kept them here?” Scathach says wearily, already dreading the answer.

Carmilla bristles and Kiyohime sighs, popping her gum. “Are you doubting my memory?” She snaps, which is not at all what Scathach was doing but. Well. Carmilla gets  _ crabby  _ when things don’t have easy solutions. It used to be endearing, but they’ve been together long enough now that Scathach simply brushes it aside and accepts it for the flaw that it is.

Shuten looks back up at the library with a grimace, taking in the sheer size of it, the towering bookshelves she can just about see through the glass doors and the crowd of people inside. She tries to imagine what this place must’ve looked like back in the eighteen hundreds, but it’s a tall order considering she barely knows what Austria looks like  _ now. _

It’s a lot of greenery. There’s a pastry shop not ten feet down the road and an antiques store right next to that. Most of the antiques only date back to the 1930’s but it’s a quaint little place, and the porcelain kitchenware she’d brought from there this morning were a delight to look at. There were red splotches of paint all over them - it reminded her of bloodstains.

“As much as I admire your optimism,” she says, glancing at Carmilla, “I really don’t think we’re getting those journals back.”

-

“I should’ve just given them to Victoria,” Carmilla mutters to herself. 

She doesn’t even particularly like those journals; they’re filled with all sorts of embarrassing love notes and sappy confessions, and she’d much rather keep them buried and forget about them entirely, but historians and archeologists have gotten much better at unearthing all sorts of private shit lately, and if there’s one thing she’d hate more than the risk of Scathach discovering any of her cringy penmanship, it’s having said cringe re-printed hundreds of times for the world to read.

Bad enough they’d managed to find one of Medb’s portraits and mistakenly connected it to a woman who’d yet to be born at the time of the portrait’s making. Medb, naturally, had thrown a furious fit when she’d seen it on the news. 

And, of course, there were Leonardo’s paintings, shared all over the world. “They’re just museums,” she’d shrugged. “My loves could have everything back for me in a day if I wanted them to.” She was right of course; Merlin and Romani had already offered to do so on multiple occasions, but Leonardo was one of the lucky ones, because she’d wanted her works to be shared with the public upon her death, so she had no reason to bitch and worry like the rest of them.

Scathach stills beside her. “Victoria?” she repeats slowly. “As in... _ Queen _ Victoria?”

Carmilla sniffs disdainfully. “Yes, well, I didn’t have the best of tastes back then, darling.” There was no such thing as ‘having taste’ back then for her - if a woman was willing then Carmilla  _ jumped  _ at the chance to woo and please them, regardless of the trouble it often led to.

Kiyohime slams her foot on the ground so hard that it draws the attention of a group of students all wearing headphones. A glance at the large crack she’s left behind in the wood has them nervously shuffling away from her as fast as they can manage. 

“Do you remember Yorinobu?” says Ibaraki with a smile.

Shuten throws herself onto a chair, knocking over a pot of pens on the table. She sighs wistfully, “he was so much fun. I miss his dump truck of an ass.”

Scathach frowns at Carmilla. “You’re lucky I’m already in love with you.”

“Why? Is fucking Victoria a deal breaker for you?”

“Given absolutely everything to do with the monarchy,” she replies dryly, “yes, normally it would’ve been.”

“And all I ever did was pursue a man who became a monk,” Kiyohime says mournfully, taking out her fan to shed a demure, fake tear behind it. A beat of silence passes. “Good riddance to the bastard.” Her fan snaps shut. “Didn’t know a good thing while he had it.”

Scathach nods politely. She’s never understood the appeal of men, but she  _ had  _ been married to one a long time ago, and he’d been nice enough, she supposed. Definitely better than the lover Kiyohime had ended up with. 

“I think,” she says finally, “we’re looking in the wrong area.”

-

“I don’t think this is right,” Carmilla announces three hours later.

The five of them are seated on the second floor staircase, blocking anyone from getting up or down, though Scathach does make an effort to keep herself pressed up against one of the bannisters to offer as much room as possible. Said effort is immediately negated by the fact that Kiyohime has taken up the entire step below hers, and Shuten and Ibaraki are balancing a packed lunch precariously on their knees on the fourth step. 

Carmilla has no idea where they pulled the lunch from, but after years of living in Chaldea with the worst roommates you could possibly ask for, she’s learned to stop asking such questions. Most of the time nobody really knows how to answer.

“I’m not burning down a library for you,” Scathach says immediately, nose scrunched up in that cute annoyed way that Carmilla loves so much.

“Think of the jobs,” Kiyohime says, rolling her eyes.

Shuten glances at her and then looks away, hiding her grin behind her cinnamon bagel. Ibaraki tries her best to snatch it without sending the rest of their food flying, but ultimately has to give up the efforts when Shuten scoffs it all at once, crumbs tumbling to the blanket over her lap. 

“We could do  _ some  _ damage to it,” Ibaraki reasons. “Think of it as - a free renovation!”

“You need a permit for that these days,” Shuten says, leaning back on her hands. “But if we do it when nobody’s around -”

“No.” 

Scathach’s glare does very little to bother Shuten, who simply grins up at her like the cat that got the cream. Or however that phrase goes. She’s never been all that great at english.

“Maybe we should come back tomorrow,” Kiyohime says. “Look at it again with fresh eyes.”

Carmilla clicks her tongue, pointing to the left of the library. “I could’ve  _ sworn  _ it was over there.” The ground is very even and there’s a lot of tables and chairs for people to sit on. But it  _ has  _ been over a century since she was here last, so maybe she  _ is  _ just remembering wrong and her friends  _ do  _ look quite tired.

She frowns. “Fuck it,” she says, throwing her hands up in defeat. “I give up. With any luck the stupid journals have wasted away to nothing in the dirt.”

Scathach’s arm settles around her shoulders and the kiss she receives soothes her temper. “Don’t be so melodramatic,” she chides her. “We have a nice hotel bed waiting for us. Soft sheets. Comfy pillows. A warm bubble bath.”

She snorts, a smile working its way up the corners. “You just want to face plant into the bed and catch up on all those late nights you’ve been having.”

Scathach hums, twirling a lock of Carmilla’s hair between her fingers. “Maybe,” she agrees, grinning softly. 

She’s smiling a lot more often these days, her crows feet and mouth wrinkles creasing everytime. Carmilla tries not to laugh as Scathach pulls her to her feet, almost stepping on Kiyohime in the process, who gives a particularly rude gesture in response. 

“Finally,” Shuten groans. “My feet are killing me.”

“Liar,” Ibaraki says lovingly. “You’ve made me carry you for most of the time we’ve been here.”

“Because my feet were hurting. You know how delicate I can be.”

-

Two weeks go by before Carmilla wakes up one Tuesday morning and loudly announces, “we have to blow up the Marigold Library.”

Ibaraki’s head pokes out of the bathroom, a beauty mask halfway applied to her face. “What?” she asks.

She can hear Shuten murmuring something from the bed. There’s a curse, a thump, another curse, and then the curtains are thrown wide open, bright sunlight spilling through the windows and straight into Kiyohime’s eyes. Scathach buries herself further under the covers, turning her back on her wife to very little avail. Eventually, she sits up with a sigh, voice hoarse from the early morning, and asks, “what is it, love?”

“Searching isn’t doing us any good, and neither is looking at old photos and geographical maps. We have to take it out by the roots.” 

“I told you, I’m not burning down -”

“We’re not burning it down,” Carmilla scoffs. “We’re blowing it up. Those are two  _ very  _ different things.”

“ _ Fire _ is still involved,” she frowns.

“Only loosely.”

“Why don’t you just dig a hole instead?” Kiyohime snarks, no doubt sick of the whole endeavour. Unfortunately for her, Carmilla thinks it’s a great idea.

“You’re a genius,” she says, tossing on one of Scathach’s shirts and nearly forgetting her shoes in her rush to leave the room. Ibaraki rolls her eyes, ducking back into the bathroom to finish her mask application.

Scathach pinches the bridge of her nose, heaves a great breath and, surprising nobody, ends up following Carmilla out into the austrian streets clad in her pyjamas, and running her fingers through her hair to try and comb it out. Her success is debatable, but it’s good enough in her books.

“So,” she says, once she’s caught up with Carmilla’s impressive stride. “Where are we going?”

“To get a jackhammer.”

“I see.” 

Their arms loop together, Carmilla pulling Scathach along with a firm grip on her bicep, which is completely unnecessary, because she’d follow regardless, but Carmilla  _ likes  _ having an excuse to feel up her muscles and Scathach is hardly one to complain about  _ that.  _ They carry on that way for a long while - drawing curious looks on the bus they catch to wherever Carmilla is taking them - when Scathach finally wakes up enough to ask, “what’s a jackhammer?”

-

Loud. A jackhammer is loud. 

“Are you  _ sure  _ this is going to work?” Scathach asks for the tenth time that evening. 

They’re standing to the left of the library where the tables and chairs are all clustered together, Shuten and Ibaraki standing guard at the fence to glare at any nosy passersby, Carmilla looking positively demonic in her glee as she adjusts the jackhammer to a different angle.

Kiyohime scoffs. “We could nuke this entire building and nobody would notice.” 

“That’s not what I asked.”

A shrug. “That’s the only answer I have.” She turns to Carmilla right before the jackhammer starts again. “What exactly are we looking for? I assume you kept them in a box of some sort.”

“I did,” Carmilla nods. “It’s a heavy wooden one with gold corners and it has rubies around the lock.”

“Of course it does,” Scathach mutters to herself. What else was she expecting from the woman who spent over seven grand on thick gemstone collars for her dogs. “And if we  _ don’t  _ find it?”

“We dig somewhere else.”

Scathach nods, watching Carmilla trying to keep the jackhammer straight as she pushes it further into the ground. “Fuck it,” she says, shuffling Carmilla away from the handles and positioning it herself. “May as well see what it feels like to fuck up concrete with this thing.”

Carmilla laughs.

-

They find the box, in the end, about twenty feet away from where Carmilla had said it was, just as the sun is beginning to peak over the horizon. It’s Kiyohime who sees it poking out of the dirt where Scathach is digging, and Carmilla dives for it faster than Scathach has ever seen her move before, but Kiyohime is closer and wrenches it out of the ground before she can get her nails on it.

The jackhammer is, regrettably, left near the library, though Carmilla promises to buy her another one when they get back home. “It’s not like I’m doing much with the land I own anyway,” she says, pressing a kiss to Scathach’s cheek. “You can fuck it up as much as you like.”

“I knew there was a reason I loved you.”

“Well, it’s certainly not for her penmanship.” Kiyohime holds up one of the journals, her face as smug as a dragon’s can be. 

Carmilla’s face flushes ten different shades of red as she dives for the book with a snarled, “don’t you fucking read that out loud -”

“ - ‘the nights without you are the longest I have ever known’,” Shuten reads loudly over Kiyohime’s shoulder, both of them effortlessly dodging Carmilla’s shrieking attempts to grab her journal. “‘And I crave your touch as the dog craves a bone.’ Oh this is terrible, darling, what were you thinking!”

“I was young and stupid,” Carmilla spits, fingers at last finding purchase on her things. She wrenches them out of Kiyohime’s hands with such force that it sends both of her friends sprawling to the ground in a heap of hyena laughs, Ibaraki and Scathach doing their level best not to draw Carmilla’s ire.

Ibaraki only lasts another five seconds before she simply cannot help herself and says, “you weren’t young at all but I won’t argue about you being stupid.” 

She isn’t usually one for taking photos, but Scathach has to admit that there is  _ something  _ irresistible about seeing Carmilla lunging for Ibaraki’s neck, her face and ears a bright burning red. 

She makes it her wallpaper.

(Later, when they’re both curled up under the covers and alone together for the first time in weeks, she manages to convince Carmilla to recite some of her cringiest poetry. All of it is uniquely terrible -  _ horrendous, _ in fact.

Scathach loves every single one of them.)

**Author's Note:**

> The Carmilla novel was written in 1872, and does, indeed, take place in Austria! In the novel, Carmilla goes by different names/personas, so I thought it'd be funny if she boned Queen Victoria before the events of said novel took place lol
> 
> Yorinobu was Raikou's brother and yes the one art piece I found depicting him gave him a fat dump truck ass so I _had _to include a joke about it__
> 
> __In Kiyohime's legend, her boyfriend, Anchin, never actually broke up with her! He just decided one day that he'd gotten over his "passions" for her, became a monk, and then just. Stopped visiting her. Sooo yeah he never officially broke up with her he just ghosted her for a super long time with no explanation so is it any wonder she got pissed and burned him alive? No_ _
> 
> __In their actual legends, Shuten was a male oni and there are several theories about his relationship with Ibaraki. The biggest theory being that Ibaraki was a female oni instead of a male one and either the lover of Shuten himself or of Shuten's son (wouldn't surprise me if it was both given how this stuff works sometimes lmao)_ _
> 
> __If you haven't read my current Scarmilla WIP I redesigned Scathach to be more of a MILF like she should be IE she has short greying hair and wrinkles. She's also very buff because I'm a weak bitch for women with muscles_ _


End file.
